Long considered one of Formula One’s leading privateer operations, the 2014 season for Sauber has been nothing short of a disaster thus far.

Its failure to score points at the Austrian Grand Prix Sunday etched the 2014 campaign in the record books for all the wrong reasons: it marks the longest stretch of races to start a season the team has had without scoring a single World Championship point. This is for a team that started in 1993, and managed to score points in its first ever Grand Prix.

Austria was the eighth round of the season. The longest it had taken Sauber to score points in the past was the seventh round of the 2010 season, when Kamui Kobayashi broke through for a 10th-place finish in the Turkish Grand Prix. That year saw the team barely back on the grid as Sauber regained control of the team from BMW, which had pulled out at the end of 2009.

On Sunday, Esteban Gutierrez’s first Austrian Grand Prix ended with him last car running in 19th, following a pit stop error where his right rear wheel was left unattached. That earned him a 10-spot grid penalty for the next round at Silverstone.

A less eventful race saw Adrian Sutil in 13th, but still shy of the points.

This is perhaps small consolation, but Sauber’s also been known for massive second-half turnarounds. Nico Hulkenberg had only two points-scoring finishes in the opening seven Grands Prix of 2013, but from Round 8 at Silverstone through to the final round at Brazil, Hulkenberg scored in eight of the last 12 races.

The team can only hope for something close to an encore this time around.